August 26, 2007

Raison d'être

There is preciously little information on the WWW on how to write a CV using Lyx under OS X with a tex installation supplied by Fink. There is a outdated tutorial which failed to work, and thats about it. This document should hopefully shed some light on the matter, and will show you how to install the moderncv latex class and get LyX to recognise it so you can make a nice CV for yourself.

moderncv class

Installation

Tex looks for classes etc in its path, which can be discovered using:kpsepath texYou will get a pretty long list of paths where tex looks for classes. Note in particular /$HOME/Library/texmf/tex///: this is a sensible place to put your own custom files in my opinion, to avoid polluting the entire local install (and to keep fink happy by not having files in places it doesn't expect). The // means all directories below /$HOME/Library/texmf/tex/ will be searched too. So unpack the zip, or place the individual files under /$HOME/Library/texmf/tex/moderncv/. Once you are done, run texhash in /$HOME/Library/texmf/.

LyX reconfiguration

The last step is to ask Lyx to reconfigure itself so it will update its own list of avaliable classes: LyX->Reconfigure, then restart LyX as recommended. That should be it :-)

Usage

Have a look in the examples/ directory in the moderncv zip file to see how to use it.

Specifically, you need to insert some latex before \begin{document}, in Document->Settings->Latex Preamble, or it won't work. You need at a minimum \familyname{} and \firstname{}. For more read the examples. Further more, you also need to insert ERT of \maketitle to have a nice title. That should be it! :-)

Installing other classes

These same steps should apply to installing other classes you find on CTAN

August 20, 2007

Paramount Pictures was nice enough to send me a complimentary double pass and soundtrack CD for Black Snake Moan, after I won some competition at atomicmpc. Now you would think a big company like Paramount Pictures can spare some change and send the CD in I don't know... a CD mailer, like one of these:

Instead they sent it in a paper envelope, and it got ripped to pieces by the mail sorting machines, so it got here looking like this:

Well you know what they say about not looking a gift horse in the mouth... but still, it would be nice to have an undamaged jewel case :P Anyways thanks to Paramount for the tickets to what is apparently a very good film.

August 06, 2007

Yes, but when it comes down to it he's not hugely relevant so is ignorable internationally - his government has pretty well been in caretaker mode for the last decade and his foreign policy is "me too". Even a major US newspaper got his name wrong and called him Mike Hunt when he was visiting the USA - possibly misled by an Aussie that was playing a bit of a joke. The last Prime Minister we had that we would expect people to notice is Malcolm Fraser - very tall, face like an Easter Island statue and memorable for running around in a US hotel with no pants on.

August 01, 2007

Postage tubes are cardboard tubes posters and similar items are normally sent in. They are bit of a pain to carry normally since they are long enough you can't just stick them in your bag. Now on a scooter it is even more of an annoyance.

So I devised a method to carry such tubes easily on my back, using some stationary and shoulder bag strap. A picture of the this tube carrying device is shown below, and it should be obvious how to construct it.

It is attached to the tube thusly:

When both ends are attached, you can just sling it over your shoulder! :-)